Gertrude Ederle becomes first woman to swim English Channel - Aug 06, 1926 - HISTORY.com Gertrude Ederle becomes first woman to swim English Channel Share this: Gertrude Ederle becomes first woman to swim English Channel Author Gertrude Ederle becomes first woman to swim English Channel URL Publisher A+E Networks On this day in 1926, on her second attempt, 19-year-old Gertrude Ederle becomes the first woman to swim the 21 miles from Dover, England, to Cape Griz-Nez across the English Channel, which separates Great Britain from the northwestern tip of France. Ederle was born to German immigrants on October 23, 1906, in New York City. She did not learn to swim until she was nine years old, and it was not until she was 15 that she learned proper form in the water. Just two years later, at the 1924 Paris Olympics, Ederle won a gold medal in the 4 x 100 meter relay and a bronze in the 100- and 400-meter freestyle races.

In June 1925, Ederle became the first woman to swim the length of New York Bay, breaking the previous men’s record by swimming from the New York Battery to Sandy Hook, New Jersey, in 7 hours 11 minutes. That same summer, Ederle made her first attempt at crossing the notoriously cold and choppy English Channel, but after eight hours and 46 minutes, her coach, Jabez Wolff, forced her to stop, out of concern that she was swallowing too much saltwater. Ederle disagreed and fired Wolff, replacing him with T.W. Burgess, a skilled Channel swimmer. On August 6, 1926, Ederle entered the water at Cape Gris-Nez in France at 7:08 a.m. to make her second attempt at the Channel. The water was predictably cold as she started out that morning, but unusually calm. Twice that day, however–at noon and 6 p.m.–Ederle encountered squalls along her route and Burgess urged her to end the swim.

Ederle’s father and sister, though, who were riding in the boat along with Burgess, agreed with Ederle that she should stay the course. Ederle’s father had promised her a new roadster at the conclusion of the swim, and for added motivation he called out to her in the water to remind her that the roadster was only hers if she finished. Ederle persevered through storms and heavy swells, and, finally, at 9:04 p.m. after 14 hours and 31 minutes in the water, she reached the English coast, becoming the sixth person and first woman to swim the Channel successfully. Furthermore, she had bettered the previous record by two hours. Afterward, Ederle told Alec Rutherford of The New York Times, “I knew it could be done, it had to be done, and I did it.” Ederle’s feat was celebrated by a ticker-tape parade in New York City, and she received congratulations from fans ranging from the mayor of New York City to Henry Sullivan, the first American man ever to swim the Channel.

Ederle damaged her hearing during the Channel swim, and went on to spend much of her adult life teaching deaf children in New York City to swim. She died in 2003 at the age of 98. Related Videos First woman to swim the English Channel: from the archive, 7 August 1926 | Sport | The Guardian Share on Messenger Close Miss Gertrude Ederle , a 19-year-old New York swimmer, swam the English Channel yesterday from the French coast to England. She is the first woman to accomplish this feat, which has been performed on only five previous occasions, although her fellow countrywoman Miss Clarabelle Barrett came within two miles of it last Monday. Her time is given as 14 hours 45 minutes, which sets up a new Channel swimming record, the previous best being 16 hours 33 minutes - the performance of Tiraboschi, the Italian swimmer, in 1923. This is Miss Ederle’s second attempt, her first being in 1925. The Channel has now been swum as follows:- 1875 Captain Webb 21h.

45m 1911 Burgess 21h. 35m. 1923 (August) Sullivan 26h. 50m. 1923 (August) Tiraboschi 16h. 33m. 1923 (September) Toth 16h. 54m. 1926 Miss Ederle 14h. 45m. Miss Ederle began her effort at seven o’clock yesterday morning in unfavourable conditions. A strong south-west wind sprang up within an hour or so of her start from Cape Gris-nez and made a rather rough sea. She did remarkably well, however, and news received at Dover showed that after six hours’ swimming she was about ten miles off the French coast, but well to the eastward. White-Capped Waves The sea remained rough (telegraphed our Dover correspondent), the wind breaking up the seas into little white-capped waves. Miss Ederle was swimming alongside her tug, the Alsace, which had a party of friends and swimmers on board, and a smaller tug.

The seven hours of flood tide with the strong south-west wind behind it gave Miss Ederle a long drift up the Channel, but she swam well and succeeded in making good headway towards England. At quarter to five she had progressed so well that her position was about seven miles south-east of Dover, with the Goodwin lightship bearing two miles north-west. The wind was moderate at that hour, and the sea conditions were slightly better than throughout the day. Shortly before eight o’clock the two tugs were accompanying her and could be seen from Dover travelling at a slow speed. She made good progress between 7 45 and 8 45, and at one time it was thought that she might succeed in landing at St. Margaret’s Bay to the east of Dover, where she was computed to be two miles off shore. She was, however, carried by the current past the point, and shortly after 9 p.m. was off Kingsdown. At 9 40 (another report puts it at 9 45) she stepped on to the beach near Kingsdown lifeboat station. By a superhuman effort she had cleared the tide and gained the beach, breasting the strong waves and wind with vigorous strokes.

As the swimmer got nearer the shore visitors and residents between Kingsdown and Deal collected all the dry material they could lay their hands on to build big bonfires, which they lighted on the beach to act as a beacon for the swimmer. When Miss Ederle got to within some 500 yards of the beach the crowd had increased to thousands, and every man, woman, and child assembled became almost frantic in their excitement as it became apparent that the swimmer had succeeded. The shrill blasts from the sirens of the two attendant tugs were insignificant compared to the great volume of human sound which came from the vast concourse of people on the foreshore. The glow from bonfires and also from the flares and searchlights exhibited on board the tugs showed the swimmer clearly with pink cap over her head and her shoulders well out of the water just finishing the last dozen or so yards which separated her from her goal. She refused all offers of help from the people, some of whom stood knee deep in the surf to assist her out. She walked out of the water remarkably fresh, and the cheering which went up must have been heard aboard ships passing up and down the Channel.

Gertrude Ederle, the First Woman to Swim Across the English Channel, Dies at 98 - The New York Times The New York Times Sports |Gertrude Ederle, the First Woman to Swim Across the English Channel, Dies at 98 Search Gertrude Ederle, the First Woman to Swim Across the English Channel, Dies at 98 By RICHARD SEVERO Continue reading the main story Gertrude Ederle, who was called ''America's best girl'' by President Calvin Coolidge in 1926 after she became the first woman to swim across the English Channel, died yesterday at a nursing home in Wyckoff, N.J. She was 98. Ederle was a symbol of the Roaring 20's, a decade given as much to heroics as to materialism. For a time, her accomplishment put her in the public's affection at the level of Babe Ruth, Jack Dempsey, Bill Tilden and Red Grange. Ederle did not sustain the lofty place in history of another hero of the 1920's, Charles A.

Lindbergh, who crossed the Atlantic a year after her historic swim, or of the golden athletes who appeared regularly before the public and kept their fame alive. But her feat, which she did only once and under horrendous conditions, made a memorable contribution in an age when many found it difficult to take female athletes seriously. They had to take Ederle seriously, because she beat the records of the five men who had previously made the swim from 1875 to 1923. Continue reading the main story Years later, after other men and women had successfully swum the Channel, Grover A. Whalen, New York City's official greeter, said that of all the celebrities he had welcomed to town, he could not recall one that made the impact of Ederle at her homecoming. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Ederele was born Oct. 23, 1905, in New York City, one of four daughters and two sons of Henry Ederle, a butcher and provisioner, and his wife, Anna. Her father owned a summer cottage in Highlands, N.J., and she learned to swim on the Jersey Shore.

She called herself a ''water baby'' and said that over the years, she was ''happiest between the waves.'' But she developed a hearing problem when she was 5, after a bout with the measles. ''The doctors told me my hearing would get worse if I continued swimming, but I loved the water so much, I just couldn't stop,'' she said. In the early 1920's, as a competitive swimmer, she set women's world freestyle records and American freestyle records for various distances from 100 to 800 meters. In a single afternoon in 1922, she broke seven such records at Brighton Beach, Brooklyn. Between 1921 and 1925, she held 29 amateur national and world records. In what might have been an anticipation of her Channel swim, she swam more than 16 miles through tricky currents between the Battery and Sandy Hook, N.J. In 1924, she was a member of the United States team that competed in the Olympics in Paris.

She won a gold medal as part of the 400-meter freestyle relay, and she won the bronze medal in the 100 and 400 individual freestyle events. It was no small accomplishment. She was swimming with an injured knee and, together with the other female athletes from the United States, she had an added handicap of fatigue. They were put up in hotels far away from the center of Paris because United States officials did not want them contaminated with what they saw as the city's bohemian morality. Ederle and her teammates had to travel five to six hours each day to practice in the Olympic pool. After Paris, she began to focus on the English Channel. The first person to swim it was Matthew Webb of England, who in 1875 made it in 21 hours 45 minutes. Of the four other men who succeeded before Ederle, none were faster than 16 hours 33 minutes. One swimmer, Henry Sullivan of the United States, required 26 hours 50 minutes. Ederle first tried to swim the Channel in 1925. The Women's Swimming Association provided the financial backing.

But after she swam 23 miles in 8 hours 43 minutes, the people in a boat who were supposed to look after her thought she might be unconscious in the water. Somebody yelled, ''She's drowning!'' and they touched her, which immediately disqualified her. A perturbed Ederle insisted that she had not been drowning at all, only resting, and that she could have easily continued. ''All I could wonder was, 'What will they think of me back in the States?' '' she said. She vowed to try it again and told her father and everyone else involved that no matter how she looked in the water, she did not want to be touched. Advertisement Continue reading the main story She decided not to ask the Women's Swimming Association to back her a second time and raised the needed $9,000 herself. With the help of her sister Margaret, she designed a two-piece bathing suit that would not drag in the water, yet would be ''decent in case I failed and they had to drag me out,'' she said. Shortly after 7 a.m. on Aug.

6, 1926, Ederle, smeared with sheep grease, waded into the English Channel at Cape Gris-Nez, France. She could see a red ball on the French shore, a warning to small craft to avoid a sea that promised to be very choppy. ''Please, God, help me,'' she said. Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up Privacy Policy For a while, she said she sang ''Let Me Call You Sweetheart'' to the rhythm of her stroke. In the boat that moved with her, the crew occasionally held up signs, which said things like ''one wheel,'' ''two wheels,'' enumerating parts of a car, because she had been promised a red roadster if she was successful. Fourteen hours 31 minutes later, a world record, Ederle reached Kingsdown on the English coast. If she had been able to swim in a straight line, it would have been a 21-mile trip. But the sea was so rough, she swam no less than 35 miles.

Ederle always held that her record was never broken, even though in 1950, another American, Florence Chadwick, swam the Channel in 13 hours 20 minutes. That was in a relatively calm sea, Ederle said, so it was not a fair comparison. She was not prepared for the ticker-tape parade that New York gave her through its financial district on Aug. 27, 1926, in which an estimated two million people turned out and chanted, ''Trudy! Trudy!'' even though her family had always called her ''Gertie.'' She had to be rushed into Mayor Jimmy Walker's office in City Hall when exuberant crowds stormed the doors. She was also not prepared for the adulation she received in the weeks to come, when somebody wrote a song titled, ''Tell Me, Trudy, Who Is Going to Be the Lucky One?'' Men were proposing to her by mail almost every week.

Coolidge invited her to the White House, called her ''America's best girl,'' and said to her, ''I am amazed that a woman of your small stature should be able to swim the English Channel.'' It was a curious observation; Ederle weighed 142 pounds and soon became an adviser to a manufacturer of dresses for large women. She was invited to join a touring vaudeville act, and there were reports that she earned $2,000 or $3,000 a week. She went to Hollywood and made a 10-minute movie about herself, for which she was paid $8,000. Various groups wanted her to speak, and the marriage proposals kept coming. ''I finally got the shakes,'' she told an interviewer years later. ''I was just a bundle of nerves. I had to quit the tour and I was stone deaf.'' The hearing problem she had since childhood was made much worse by the Channel swim. Ederle had what was later described as a nervous breakdown. Her encroaching deafness made her shy away from people.

In 1929, she was ''practically engaged'' to one man, and suggested to him that it might be difficult being married to a woman who could not hear well. He agreed and vanished. After he left her, she said: ''There never was anyone else. I just didn't want to get hurt again.'' Advertisement Continue reading the main story As the years passed, the public made fewer demands on her. The proposals stopped. In 1933, she slipped on broken tiles in the stairwell of the apartment building in which she lived, injured her back and was in a cast for four years. Doctors told her she would neither walk nor swim again, but in 1939 she appeared in Billy Rose's Aquacade at the New York World's Fair. Over the years, it sometimes seemed that journalists alone remembered her, and they wrote articles commemorating the 5th, 10th, 15th, 20th and 25th anniversaries of her Channel swim. She always obliged with an interview but detested the articles that tried to make her pitiable.

''Don't weep for me, don't write any sob stories,'' she told The New York Times in 1956. When World War II began, Ederle took a job working for an airline at La Guardia Airport. She checked flight instruments used by airplanes and loved the work, she said. She quit after the war, when told she could keep the job if she moved to Tulsa, Okla. For many years, she taught swimming to children at the Lexington School for the Deaf in New York. She did not know sign language but was able to demonstrate to them in the water what they should know about swimming. Her own deafness continued to worsen. Although she claimed she had saved and invested well, she never made the huge amounts of money that came to celebrities in later generations. She earned some money in the 1950's lending her name to a bacteria-free swimming pool, but her income over the years was modest. Ederle lived for many years in Flushing, Queens, with two female companions. She is survived by 10 nephews and nieces. ''I have no complaints,'' Ederle told one interviewer. ''I am comfortable and satisfied.

I am not a person who reaches for the moon as long as I have the stars.'' Gertrude Ederle, first woman to swim English Channel; at 98 - The Boston Globe Gertrude Ederle, first woman to swim English Channel; at 98 By Polly Anderson, Associated Press | December 1, 2003 NEW YORK -- Gertrude Ederle, who was the toast of America and Europe in 1926 when she became the first woman to swim the English Channel, died yesterday. She was 98. In a roaring decade in which Americans cheered daredevils, few were as celebrated as Ms. Ederle, who was 20 when she made her historic swim on Aug. 6. "People said women couldn't swim the channel," Ms. Ederle said in a 2001 interview marking the 75th anniversary of her feat. "I proved they could." When she returned to her native land, there were celebrations, receptions, and a ticker-tape parade for her in New York, where she was born.

She met President Coolidge, was paid thousands to tour in vaudeville, played herself in a movie ("Swim, Girl, Swim"), and had a song and a dance step named for her. Only five men had succeeded in swimming the channel before her, and she beat the record by more than two hours. "I thought it was marvelous, and I thought only Gertrude could have done it," another top swimmer from the era, Aileen Riggin Soule, said in a 1999 interview. "She had the stubbornness." Ms. Ederle (pronounced ED-er-lee) swam the treacherous stretch under adverse conditions, battling rip tides, cross currents, driving rain, and heavy seas, as well as a constant threat of floating debris, poisonous jellyfish, and sharks. She left Cape Griz-Nez, France, at 7:05 a.m. and stumbled ashore at Kingsdown, England, 14 hours and 30 minutes later. Because of the stormy weather, she had swum 35 miles in crossing the 21-mile-wide channel.

Yet her time stood for 24 years before it was broken in 1950 by Florence Chadwick, who negotiated 23 miles in 13 hours and 20 minutes. Two tugs accompanied her, one filled with relatives and friends, and the other with reporters and photographers, some of them seasick. A phonograph played lively tunes to buoy her spirit, and those in the boats sang, too. But Ms. Ederle said her well-wishers needed to be buoyed up more than she did. "I had to keep joking with them to keep their spirits up," she recalled. "I remember they sang endlessly: `Let Me Call You Sweetheart,' `Sweet Rosie O'Grady,' and `After the Ball Is Over.' But when the storm was fiercest, they all looked as if they were going to a funeral. Every time I stopped, they jumped and said, `What's the matter, Trudy? Everything OK?' " During some of the toughest moments, her trainer tried to get her to give up. "I'd just look at him and say, `What for?' " she recalled.

At the ticker-tape parade, the crowds shouted, "Hello, Miss What-For!" She was little affected by the fame. She remained what one writer called her, "an almost old-fashioned girl in a world of flappers." Soule, who toured with Ms. Ederle in a swimming exhibition, recalled her as "a sweet person -- thoughtful, kind. She even wrote poetry." Ms. Ederle held a string of world records at various distances. At the 1924 Olympics in Paris, she was hobbled by the stress of travel and turned in a disappointing performance -- by her standards -- of one second-place finish, one third-place finish, and a first on a relay team. In 1925, she swam the 21 miles from the tip of Manhattan to Sandy Hook, N.J., in seven hours, 11 1/2 minutes, bettering the record held by men. That same year, she made her first try at the English Channel, saying later that she failed only because a worried trainer grabbed her when she briefly began coughing. As soon as someone touched her, she was disqualified. Ms.

Ederle fell down a flight of stairs in 1933, injuring her spine. Battling back, she returned to the spotlight at the 1939 World's Fair, swimming in a show at the famous Aquacade. Her hearing had not been good since a childhood bout with the measles, and the hours spent in the water aggravated the problem. By the 1940s, she was deaf. Out of the spotlight, she taught deaf children to swim -- "since I can't hear either, they feel I'm one of them" -- and participated in some business ventures. Giving few interviews, she lived quietly in Queens for many years. She had spent the last several years living at the Christian Health Care Center in Wyckoff, N.J., about 25 miles northwest of New York City. "I have no complaints," Ms. Ederle said in one interview in the 1950s. "I am comfortable and satisfied. I am not a person who reaches for the moon as long as I have the stars. God has been good to me." © Copyright 2006 Globe Newspaper Company. More: The first woman swam the English Channel in 1926.

- ReadWriteThink The first woman swam the English Channel in 1926. On August 6, 1926, 19-year-old Gertrude Ederle became the first woman to swim the 21 miles across the English Channel in 14 hours and 31 minutesï¿½nearly 2 hours less than any man had at that point. Ederle passed away in November 2003. ï¿½ Take the anniversary of Ederle's famous swim as an opportunity to talk about today's famous athletes. Have students brainstorm a list of famous athletic competitors for both individual and team sports. There were, of course, thousands of athletes who competed in national and international events like those that Ederle competed in; however, only a few are still remembered today. Encourage students to establish criteria as a class that help make an athlete particularly memorable. Then ask your students to forecast which of today's athletes will still be remembered for their accomplishments in 75 to 100 years, as Ederle is remembered long after her famous swim across the English Channel. Students can use the ReadWriteThink Printing Press to create flyers that campaign for their choices.

ï¿½ Your students may know how to swim, but do they know the techniques used by the best swimmers? This video explains how Missy Franklin used fluid dynamics in her quest for Olympic gold in the 2012 Summer Games. ï¿½ In this NPR-archived broadcast, Bob Dunkel, executive director of the International Swimming Hall of Fame, reviews Ederle's lifetime of accomplishments. ï¿½ Students can learn more about the early history of swimming the English Channel by exploring the online exhibition of the Dover Museum in Kent. ï¿½ The Women's Sports Foundation, a charitable educational organization dedicated to advancing the lives of girls and women through sports and physical activity, offers new fitness tips and much more at their website. ï¿½ First woman to swim English Channel dies First woman to swim English Channel dies ( 2003-12-01 17:01) (Agencies) Gertrude Ederle, who battled rip tides, cross currents, driving rain and mountainous seas to become the first woman to swim the English Channel and strike a blow for women's rights, has died.

Ederle died Sunday at the Christian Health Care Center in Wyckoff, N.J., about 25 miles northwest of New York City, said Martin Ward, whose wife is one of Ederle's 10 surviving nieces and nephews. She was 98. Ederle was 20 when she made her historic swim on Aug. 6, 1926, navigating the choppy, treacherous channel under the constant threat of floating debris, poisonous jellyfish and sharks. She left Cape Griz-Nez, France, at 7:05 a.m. and stumbled ashore at Kingsdown, England, 14 hours and 30 minutes later. Only five men had succeeded in swimming the channel before her, and she beat the record by more than two hours. Because of the stormy weather, she had swum 35 miles in crossing the 21-mile-wide channel. Yet her time for the crossing stood for 24 years before it was broken in 1950 by Florence Chadwick, who negotiated 23 miles in 13 hours and 20 minutes.

"People said women couldn't swim the channel," Ederle (pronounced ED-er-lee) told The Associated Press in a 2001 interview marking the 75th anniversary of her feat. "I proved they could." When she returned to America, there were celebrations, receptions and a roaring ticker-tape parade for her in New York. She met President Coolidge, was paid thousands to tour in vaudeville, played herself in a movie ("Swim, Girl, Swim") and had a song and a dance step named for her. During some of the toughest moments during the swim, her trainer, fearful of her well-being, tried to get her to give up, "but I'd just look at him and say, `What for?'" Ederle recalled. At the ticker-tape parade, the crowds shouted, "Hello, Miss What-For!" "I thought it was marvelous, and I thought only Gertrude could have done it," another top swimmer from the era, Aileen Riggin Soule, said in a 1999 interview with The Associated Press. "She had the stubbornness." Ederle was little affected by the fame that followed.

She remained what one writer called her, "an almost old-fashioned girl in a world of flappers." She eventually quit touring when the stress got too much. Ederle was a champion swimmer before her Channel swim, holding a string of world records at various distances. At the 1924 Olympics in Paris, she was hobbled by the stress of travel and turned in a disappointing performance by her standards of one second-place finish, one third-place finish and a first on a relay team. In 1925, she swam the 21 miles from the tip of Manhattan to Sandy Hook, N.J., in seven hours, 11 1/2 minutes, bettering the record held by men. That same year, she made her first try at the English Channel, saying later that she failed only because a worried trainer grabbed her when she briefly began coughing. As soon as someone touched her, she was disqualified. After giving up her personal appearance tour, Ederle fell down a flight of stairs in 1933, injuring her spine. Battling back, she returned to the spotlight at the 1939 World's Fair, swimming in a show at the famous Aquacade.

Her hearing hadn't been good since a childhood bout with the measles, and hours spent in the water aggravated the problem. By the 1940s, she was entirely deaf. Out of the spotlight, she taught deaf children to swim "since I can't hear either, they feel I'm one of them" and participated in some business ventures. Giving few interviews, she lived quietly in the Queens borough for many years. "I have no complaints," Ederle said in an interview in the 1950s. "I am comfortable and satisfied. I am not a person who reaches for the moon as long as I have the stars. God has been good to me." Remembering Long-Distance Swimmer Gertrude Ederle - History in the Headlines Remembering Long-Distance Swimmer Gertrude Ederle August 21, 2012 By Christopher Klein Coated in grease, Gertrude Ederle wades into the water on August 6, 1926, beginning her successful attempt to swim the English Channel.

Share this: Remembering Long-Distance Swimmer Gertrude Ederle Author Remembering Long-Distance Swimmer Gertrude Ederle URL Google Today, after more than 41 hours in the water, 62-year-old American Diana Nyad was forced by powerful squalls to abandon her fourth attempt to become the first person to swim the 103 miles from Cuba to Key West, Florida, without a shark cage. Nyad's quest stirs echoes of 86 years ago, when another American female endurance swimmer, Gertrude Ederle, made history by becoming the first woman to swim across the English Channel. Standing on a French beach slathered in black sheep grease and sporting huge amber-tinted wraparound goggles, Gertrude Ederle looked more like an extra in a bad sci-fi movie than an elite athlete attempting to make sporting history. Her strange get-up, however, was simply protection for the treacherous journey ahead. Ederle was attempting something that no woman had done before: to swim the 21 miles across the English Channel. At 7:08 a.m.

on August 6, 1926, the 20-year-old American waded into the chilly waters of the English Channel at Cap Gris-Nez, France, and began to glide through the water with her graceful strokes. This was Ederle’s second attempt to swim the channel. Her first try on August 18, 1925, ended in disappointment after nine hours when her trainer, thinking the swimmer might be unconscious and drowning, ordered her pulled from the water into the accompanying boat. Ederle, who said she was just resting, was furious and determined not to let the same thing happen again. This time, she made everyone in the entourage on the escorting boat, including her father, promise not to touch her. Gertrude Ederle is crowned “Queen of the Waves” in September 1926 in New York City. (Topical Press Agency/Getty Images) This was no day for boating, let alone swimming, however. The channel was so choppy that steamships canceled routes and small craft were warned to stay on shore. Still, Ederle made steady progress through the Strait of Dover as her escort boat bobbed up and down on the rolling waves.

For one thing, she was better equipped for this second campaign to cross the channel. Ederle had abandoned her usual singlet for a revolutionary, two-piece silk bathing suit that reduced drag and chafing. Her homemade leather and rubber goggles were caked with molten candle wax to stay watertight, and she had applied black grease to help retain body heat. The New York City native had first learned to swim at her family’s summer home on the Jersey Shore, and she quickly proved a natural. Ederle set 29 American and world records between 1921 and 1925, and was so versatile that she captured national championships at distances ranging from 50 yards to a half-mile. At the 1924 Summer Olympics, she won a gold medal as part of the 400-meter freestyle relay along with bronze in the 100- and 400-meter freestyle. The English Channel was by far the stiffest test the phenom had ever faced, however. Since Matthew Webb became the first to complete the swim in 1875, only four other men had duplicated the feat. Many doubted whether a woman had the strength or endurance to do the same.

If the doubters didn’t give her enough incentive to push on through to England, this did: Her father promised her a red roadster if she could do the swim. By the 12th hour, however, conditions deteriorated further, and Ederle’s trainer was extremely concerned about her condition. “Come out of the water!” he bellowed from the boat. “What for?” yelled back the swimmer, who was still feeling strong. The American continued to sing to herself to the beat of her strokes and, 14 hours and 31 minutes after she waded into French waters, she wobbled ashore in Kingsdown, England. The conditions had been so rough that Ederle swam 35 miles, rather than the planned straight-line course of 21 miles. In spite of the circuitous route and the doubts about the capabilities of female swimmers, Ederle not only proved that a woman could swim the English Channel, she bested the men’s record time by nearly two hours. History may not have been the first thing on her mind when she touched English sand, however. As Ederle fell into the arms of her father, she asked him, “Hey, Pop?

Do I get that red roadster?” Swimmer Diana Nyad in Key West, Florida, in August 2010. (Walter Michot/Miami Herald/MCT via Getty Images) Amazingly, setting foot on English soil may have been the most difficult part of Ederle’s journey from France. After changing into dry clothes, Ederle was transported by boat to Dover, where she was greeted by a cheering crowd-and pesky customs agents. British officials actually requested Ederle’s passport, and as the crowd booed and hissed, they gave the exhausted swimmer a thorough grilling and conducted a cursory search to make sure she was not smuggling anything before allowing her ashore. Ederle enjoyed a warmer reception when she returned to New York City. The woman dubbed the “Queen of the Waves” by the press was given a royal welcome that included a ticker-tape parade down Broadway on August 27, 1926. An estimated crowd of 2 million turned out, and at least for one day, the city took a break from mourning the death of movie icon Rudolph Valentino, whose body was in a funeral parlor church 5 miles north on Broadway and 66th Street.

“Rudy Forgotten by Crowd for Trudy” read one newspaper headline. Ederle became one of the most famous women in America in the Roaring Twenties. She appeared in movies and was the subject of songs. Marriage proposals flowed in through the mail. President Calvin Coolidge called her “America’s best girl.” Life became more difficult as the years passed, however. Her hearing loss, which began with a childhood bout of measles, continued to worsen. Then, in 1933, she fell down a flight of stairs and fractured her spine. Doctors said Ederle would never walk or swim again. She did both, although she spent nearly five years in a cast after the accident. In 1965, she was inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame. And, yes, Ederle did get that red roadster. Tags Gertrude Ederle, First Woman to Swim the English Channel, Dies at 98 - Swimming World News 01 December 2003, 07:55am Gertrude Ederle, First Woman to Swim the English Channel, Dies at 98 WYCKOFF, New Jersey, December 1.

GERTRUDE Ederle, who in 1926 became the first woman to swim across the English Channel, died yesterday at a nursing home in Wyckoff, N.J. She was 98. Ederle was a symbol of the Roaring 20's, a decade given to heroics. It was the age of Babe Ruth, Jack Dempsey and Charles Lindbergh, and Ederle's feat, which she accomplished only once and under terrible conditions — she battled choppy waters, rip tides, cross currents, driving rain and mountainous seas, and was constantly threatened by floating debris, poisonous jellyfish and sharks — made a memorable contribution to women's sports. In an age when many found it difficult to take female athletes seriously, Ederle had to be taken seriously because her time of 14 hours 30 minutes was more than two hours faster than the fastest of the five men who had previously made the swim from 1875 to 1923. Because of the stormy weather, she had swum 35 miles in crossing the 21-mile-wide channel.

Yet her time for the crossing stood for 24 years before it was eclipsed in 1950 by Florence Chadwick, who negotiated 23 miles in 13 hours and 20 minutes. "People said women couldn't swim the channel," Ederle told The Associated Press in a 2001 interview marking the 75th anniversary of her feat. "I proved they could." When she returned home, there were celebrations, receptions and a roaring ticker-tape parade for her in New York. She met President Calvin Coolidge, was paid thousands to tour in vaudeville, played herself in a movie ("Swim, Girl, Swim") and had a song and a dance step named for her. "I thought it was marvelous, and I thought only Gertrude could have done it," another top swimmer from the era and a Masters great, Aileen Riggin Soule, said in a 1999 interview. "She had the stubbornness." Ederle was little affected by the fame that followed.

She remained what one writer called her, "an almost old-fashioned girl in a world of flappers." Soule, who toured with Ederle in a swimming exhibition, recalled her as "a sweet person — thoughtful, kind. She even wrote poetry." Ederele was born Oct. 23, 1905, in New York City, one of four daughters and two sons of Henry Ederle, a butcher and provisioner, and his wife, Anna. Her father owned a summer cottage in Highlands, N.J., and she learned to swim on the Jersey Shore. She called herself a "water baby" and said that over the years, she was "happiest between the waves." But she developed a hearing problem when she was five, after a bout with the measles. "The doctors told me my hearing would get worse if I continued swimming, but I loved the water so much, I just couldn't stop," she said. In the early 1920's, as a competitive swimmer, she set women's world freestyle records and American freestyle records for various distances from 100 to 800 meters.

In a single afternoon in 1922, she broke seven such records at Brighton Beach, Brooklyn. Between 1921 and 1925, she set 29 national and world records. In 1924, she was a member of the United States team that competed in the Olympics in Paris. She won a gold medal as part of the 400-meter freestyle relay, and she won individual bronze medals in the 100 and 400 freestyle events. It was no small accomplishment. She was swimming with an injured knee and, together with the other female athletes from the United States, she had an added handicap of fatigue. They were put up in hotels far away from the center of Paris because United States officials did not want them contaminated with what they saw as the city's bohemian morality. Ederle and her teammates had to travel five to six hours each day to practice in the Seine River, where the swimming events were held. After Paris, she began to focus on the English Channel. The first person to swim it was Matthew Webb of England, who in 1875 made it in 21 hours 45 minutes.

Of the four other men who succeeded before Ederle, none was faster than 16 hours 33 minutes. Share Comments Off on Gertrude Ederle, First Woman to Swim the English Channel, Dies at 98 Read More

Question: Who was the first woman to swim the English Channel?
Answer: Gertrude Ederle